Posted by Joelle on June 26, 2013

As a veteran of the rough-and-tumble, often-perplexing NYC dating scene, I was immensely curious to crack open The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., the debut novel by Adelle Waldman. A peek into the mind—the motivations, the rationalizations, the insecurities—of a 30-something writer living in Brooklyn? Yes, please!

Nathaniel ("Nate") Piven is on the cusp of literary stardom. A freelance writer who has his pick of magazine assignments, he has just sold his first book to a major publisher for a six-figure advance. He also has his pick of the ladies. The book jacket promises "a plunge into the psyche of a modern man—who thinks himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety; who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down." Complexly layered characters like Nate are few and far between—he elicits sympathy one moment, supreme frustration the next, which just makes him all the more believable. Waldman's keen, effortless prose adds to the difficulty of putting the book down once you've started.

Here's a brief excerpt from early on in the book. Nate's at a dinner party being thrown by his ex-girlfriend/now-friend, Elisa:

While he ate his chicken cacciatore—which, as it happened, was quite good—Nate studied Elisa's heart-shaped face: those big, limpid eyes and dramatic cheekbones, the pretty, bow-shaped lips and profusion of white teeth. Each time Nate saw her, Elisa's beauty struck him anew, as if in the interval the memory of what she actually looked like had been distorted by the tortured emotions she elicited since they'd broken up: in his mind, she took on the dimensions of an abject creature. What a shock when she opened the door, bursting with vibrant, almost aggressive good health. The power of her beauty, Nate had once decided, came from its ability to constantly reconfigure itself. When he thought he'd accounted for it, filed it away as a dead fact—pretty girl—she turned her head or bit her lip, and like a children's toy you shake to reset, her prettiness changed shape, its coordinates altered: now it flashed from the elegant contours of her sloping brow and flaring cheekbone, now from her shyly smiling lips. "Elisa the Beautiful," Nate had said without thinking when she hugged him at the door. She'd beamed, breezily overlooking his lateness.

Yet only a short while later, he'd acclimated. Hannah had complimented her apartment. "I hate it," Elisa responded. "It's small, and it's laid out poorly. The fixtures are incredibly cheap." Then a quick smile: "Thank you, though."

The familiar hint of whine in Elisa's voice brought back to Nate an equally familiar cocktail of guilt and pity and dread. Also sheer annoyance—that spoiled, ill-tempered quality about her. Her prettiness became an irritant, a Calypso-like lure to entrap him again.